The swift development and increasing deployment of facial recognition software prompts the question are we heading towards a tech-driven utopia, or will future technology use our faces to monitor, control and limit our freedoms?

One of the first things humans recognise is the face. Studies show that babies who are less than an hour old stare at faces longer than any other ‘pattern’ and that older babies’ brains respond to faces in much the same way as adults’ do.

Digital recognition has taken a lot longer to develop but it’s about to come of age. It is increasingly accurate, which means it is being deployed by commercial, governmental and criminal concerns. Take Facebook’s Deepface software, which is being developed for automatic tagging of friends in photos, with a 97.25% accuracy rate, lagging only 0.18% behind a human’s.

• Concerns have been raised that retailers are planning to use it to track consumer behaviour

• As we saw above it is not just terrorists who are being profiled by spy agencies

As facial recognition becomes more effective the questions it raises become more pressing, and much more personal. Who exactly is recording your face? Where are you being tracked? And more importantly, how is this collected data being used?

In this infographic from whoishostingthis.com they explore how effective facial recognition is today, who is using it and what it means for you. This infographic may not show you a future you’d want, but it might be one that you have to face.

Facial Recognition : Who is Watching You Online and Why?

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